Lucia Silva, book buyer at Portrait of a Bookstore, declares Chin Music Press "a triumphant kick in the pants for anyone who doubts the future of paper-and-ink books." We take the time to produce high-quality, high-design books that, like food from the slow food movement, can be savored. Our Japan and Asia-related titles include fiction, cultural studies, politics, memoirs, and art books. Our New Orleans titles, published under the Broken Levee Books imprint, include fiction, essay collections, and photography. We also publish Americana fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and photography. Please visit our online store.

"Though that city is changing at a whiplash speed, many residents of cities in the throes of redevelopment booms can relate to the nostalgic pang of seeing a once-familiar corner appear alien, or the sense that a freshly gentrified neighborhood’s quirks have been smudged into sameness. But each of the book’s entries offers a rejoinder: Committing spaces to memory, in ink, is both a mode of preservation and a roadmap for the future, highlighting how people form bonds with places and each other." -- Jessica Leigh Hester in CityLab

This time capsule of a book reminds us of all the ghosts that exist just beneath the shiny surface of gentrifying Seattle.

In this teeming lyrical novel, love is remembered as a jungle of flora and fauna cleaved by tectonic shock and human fault. Our restless narrator stirs between Singapore, Japan, and British Columbia with prose that engulfs like radioactive mist. Personal, geographic, political, and cultural environments take on one another's qualities, culminating in the Tohoku earthquake that shatters Japan.

Hiroko, headstrong and irreverent, uses her father's money to move to New York, promising to become a famous artist. Intolerant of weakness in others, she crumbles in the face of her own shortcomings. Sakiko, fragile and unsure in 1960s San Francisco, falls into marriage with a brazen Californian artist. From catty carpooling moms to manipulative stoners, abortions to adultery, White Elephant is a vivid book from a seasoned artist turned writer. Mako Idemitsu, daughter of Rockefelleresque petroleum executive Sazo Idemitsu, reconfigures her own family discord to reflect on the binds of being female in this quietly complex English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter.

In our ever-more-globalized world, how better to connect than with food, and who better to connect us than a chowhound communications professor? Crofts concocts a multimedia feast of photos, “sketchnotes,” and vignettes, inviting us to everything from Thanksgiving in Germany to a Lunar New Year dumpling party in Seattle. The result is a beautiful meditation on how food nourishes community.

Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko
Story by David Jacobson Translations by Sally Ito & Michiko Tsuboi

Japanese children's poet Misuzu Kaneko (1903-1930) has captivated children and adults alike with her innate sympathy for all living—and nonliving—things. Forgotten for decades, her poetry touched the hearts of millions following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan in 2011

Against a backdrop of rapidly morphing urban landscapes, readers meet migrant workers, Korean manufacturers out to save a few bucks, high-flying venture capitalists, street thugs, and shakedown artists. The picture of China that emerges is at turns unsettling, awe-inspiring, and heart-breaking. best-selling Korean novelist Cho Chongnae deftly portrays a giant awakening to its own raw, volatile, and often uncontrollable power.

Seeing the Light: Four Decades in Chinatown
Photos & essays by Dean Wong

"Dean Wong has a patient eye that picks out an extraordinary instance borne out of many ordinary hours. That snapshot in time resonates." -- Alan Lau, painter and author of Songs for Jadina, winner of the 1981 American Book award.

This dark sci-fi novel explores the lost universes of Dylan Greenyears. After losing the lead in Titanic, Dylan exiles himself and his wife to a recently-settled exoplanet. For a while, life beyond Earth seems uncannily un-wondrous. But then a box of fan mail (and the hint of a galaxy-wide conspiracy) offers Dylan a chance to recapture the past.

James brings to life a series of strong women and interesting men in this 17-story collection set in southern Lousiana. While the women are African American, James doesn't dwell on race. "The characters are not so much concerned with color as they are concerened with survival," she writes. Her lyrical style evokes the grit of life on the bayou.

Christmas Eve in Vacherie, Louisiana, finds the banks of the Mississippi alive with fire. Walter Doucet's holiday season is consumed with planning the perfect bonfire -- the one that will finally beat his brother's blaze and extinguish the lingering melancholy from his father's death. As Walter obsesses over wood, kindling and structure, his family life teeters on the brink of collapse.

Arriving in Seattle on the eve of World War II, Japanese-born Mitsuko falls for Tom, a widowed pastor, and quickly bonds with his fair-haired son. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor strains their relations as war hysteria and race prejudice rise.

An irreverent celebration of the exponential quirks at the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter. Tom Varisco captures the many moods, events, faces, textures, smells and sounds of one of America's most famous destinations.

Yokohama Yankee is the first book to look at Japan across five generations with perspective that is both from the inside and through foreign eyes, with photographs, maps, illustrations, postcards and ephemera from the late 19th century to today.

Cute Grit is the debut collection of digitally designed pop art by Japanese American artist Enfu. So named for its fanciful, yet edgy style, this comprehensive compilation of hundreds of colorful illustrations merges childlike imagination with serious exploration of Asian American identity.

Combining his lifelong interest in Japanese tradition and his personal experiences with these vengeful spirits, author Zack Davisson launches an investigation into the origin, popularization, and continued existence of yurei.

This collection of photography and bilingual poetry plunges booklovers into the backstreets and hipster bars of Osaka. Henguchi builds on the surrealism of Haruki Murakami and his contemporaries to create a new aesthetic for a young generation of Japanese artists.

Bill Porter recounts his fascinating journey from the mouth to the source (some say he was the first Caucasian to actually reach the source) in the early 1990s. This collection includes 43 black-and-white photos that provide a visual trail of the memorable journey.

A Commonplace Book of Pie
Kate Lebo illustrations by Jessica Lynn Bonin

This slim volume is chockful of poems, recipes and baking tips from Lebo. Shelf Awareness says that "readers will be hard-pressed to know whether this book belongs in the kitchen for the recipes or on the coffee table for the illustrations and poems. Charming to read in either spot."

A timely, seductive mystery set on a tiny island plagued by a swarm of earthquakes. Exquisite art and a beautiful insert of the retelling of the Japanese giant catfish myth compliment the page-turning story.

This first-person narrative told through dreamlike images of toys and dolls chronicles one couple’s evacuation from New Orleans ahead of the broken levees, the birth of their first child on the day that Katrina made landfall, and their return.

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
Edited by Dave Rutledge

This beautiful anthology, structured like a jazz funeral, was published just before the first Mardi Gras after the levees broke. A collection of authors, artists, and historians capture the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina.

Investigative journalist and New Orleans native Jason Berry's novel unravels the mysterious death of Governor Rex LaSalle. Travel through a corrupt yet vibrant political culture and lurk beneath the intrigue of the lasting damage caused by gulf coast oil brokers.

A roaring comic allegory for the coming post-9/11 world and generation. At the center of this hilarious tale is quixotic high school senior class president Tucker “Catfish” Davis, who has never encountered a fight he didn’t take on.

How much is a father&39;s love worth? Jason Thibodeaux has a $42 million contract to pitch for the Colorado Rockies and a romantic bachelor lifestyle when the son he lost in a searing custody battle reappears in his life.

A masterful tale of an emotionally deadened Japanese American caught up in a mystery of suicide cults, underground poetry societies and a quest to understand the ancient Japanese concept of mono no aware.

Sumie Kawakami's engaging interviews and in-depth reporting take us into a world where fortune tellers serve as counselors, where a female executive who turns tricks by night is seen as a heroine and where the hot blood of newlyweds quickly grows cold.

One of the most oft-quoted political pundits in Japan, Morita predicts the downfall of the LDP in this blistering critique of US-Japan ties during the Koizumi-Bush era. He urges Japan to say "No!" to its unhealthy relationship with the US in this hard-hitting expose.

Kuhaku is a love letter, a diary entry, a travelogue, and a late-night rant all rolled into one gorgeous cloth-bound, foil-stamped anthology of essays and art. Features Roland Kelts, kozyndan, Sumie Kawakami and the infamous "canned coffee" reviews.